Angola/English
- Thread starter ilocas2
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Hello,
The adjective "angol" (English) is similar to the African country Angola, but there is never any confusion about that.
There are no words with a double meaning, as you imply.
Angola = Angola
angolai = Angolan
Anglia = England
angol = adj. English
angolul = adv. in English
If there was an Angolan language, "in Angolan" would be "angolaiul"
.
Compare:
Kína = China
kínai = Chinese
kínaiul = in Chinese
The adjective "angol" (English) is similar to the African country Angola, but there is never any confusion about that.
There are no words with a double meaning, as you imply.
Angola = Angola
angolai = Angolan
Anglia = England
angol = adj. English
angolul = adv. in English
If there was an Angolan language, "in Angolan" would be "angolaiul"
.Compare:
Kína = China
kínai = Chinese
kínaiul = in Chinese
The beginning "a" in the two words has a completely different history and reason. In the case of Angola, I suppose, it is only there to make the pronunciation easier. The origin of the word comes from "ngola" which was the name of kings who ruled the Ndongo kingdom.
As it is not customary to start a word with two consonants in Hungarian and to help the pronunciation, a vowel was necessary.
(I haven't found a detailed explanation about this, so I imagine the "a" must have fitted best our ~~sound system to stay closest to the original pronunciation.)
As it is not customary to start a word with two consonants in Hungarian and to help the pronunciation, a vowel was necessary.
(I haven't found a detailed explanation about this, so I imagine the "a" must have fitted best our ~~sound system to stay closest to the original pronunciation.)
I hope you're not being serious that it was us Hungarians who added the "A" in front of "ngola", to create the name of a Portuguese colony in Africa.
No, but it is sure that we could have done it as opposed to trying to pronounce a word beginning with two consonants. It is true that we are not alone with that.
P.S.I don't know much about Portuguese linguistics but probably it goes similarly in their language, too. Latin languages don't particularly known for having too many double consonants at the beginning of words... I don't know about Slav languages. In Russian there is an "a" at the beginning of the word but I don't know about the others.
It is true that we are not alone with that.P.S.I don't know much about Portuguese linguistics but probably it goes similarly in their language, too. Latin languages don't particularly known for having too many double consonants at the beginning of words... I don't know about Slav languages. In Russian there is an "a" at the beginning of the word but I don't know about the others.
Sorry, I didn't mean to be disrespectful.
Like most Indo-European languages, Portuguese has no problem with certain word-initial consonant clusters, just think of the country name Brazil.
However, "ng" at the beginning of a word is not possible, that's why the Portuguese colonists named the country Angola in the 16th century. This name later spread and became "international". The country is called "Angola" in virtually all languages today, regardless of whether they tolerate word-initial consonant clusters or not.
Like most Indo-European languages, Portuguese has no problem with certain word-initial consonant clusters, just think of the country name Brazil.
However, "ng" at the beginning of a word is not possible, that's why the Portuguese colonists named the country Angola in the 16th century. This name later spread and became "international". The country is called "Angola" in virtually all languages today, regardless of whether they tolerate word-initial consonant clusters or not.
Hello, I have a side question. Are these adverbs used only in the context of languages? I'm asking because in Czech these adverbs are just normal adverbs and there is no rule that they can be used only in the context of languages. For example let's say that there is an African dance which is danced differently in Angola and in Namibia. In Czech you can say "Dance it Angolanly, not Namibianly!". Is it possible in Hungarian?
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The word "angolaiul" does not exist because this language does not exist. Some high class people speak Portuguese in Angola. The others (>95%) speak several different African languages which I cannot enlist.
The Hungarian being an agglutinative laguage, the last vowel of the word Angola is perceived as part of the noun itself and kept unchanged, unlike e.g. in Slavic languages where it is seen as a nominative singular ending, thus it changes according to the corresponding declension pattern (Angola, od Angoly, v Angole, s Angolou, ...). So the adverb angolul cannot derive from the noun Angola, but only from the adjective angol.
Is it common to say e.g. "tancovat maďarsky/česky/rusky" (to dance Hungarian/Czech/Russian) in Czech language?
(In Slovak, even if it is possible to say "tancovať po angolsky" [to dance "Angolanly"], it is somehow a bit ambiguous and not quite usual. I'd prefer to say "tancovať na angolský spôsob" [to dance in the Angolan way/manner] ).
In Hungarian I'd say "angolai módon táncolni" or "angolaiasan táncolni". In case of Angola, the adverb angolaiasan sounds a bit weird, as it is unusual, but the adverbs magyarosan, csehesen, tótosan/szlovákosan, lengyelesen, angolosan, etc ... are normal and commonly used. In other words, the ending -ul/-ül, when added to an adjective indicating a nation, typically (though not exclusively) refers to the language. So e.g. magyarul practically means "in Hungarian (language)" and magyarosan means "in a (typically) Hungarian way/mood/manner".
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Sorry, but the more I think about it, the more I'm getting lost in it and it's giving a headache... Anyway, thanks for the reply.
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Nobody said it existed:
If there was an Angolan language, "in Angolan" would be "angolaiul"
In my opinion, the word angolaiul is grammatically and linguistically perfectly correct. It's a totally different question if there really exists a language called "angolai" (= "Angolian").
Finally, for example, what we used to call kínai (Chinese) practically corresponds to a plenty of various languages and dialects spoken in China. I.e. the term kínai/Chinese commonly does not represent a particular language (from the linguistical point of view), but rather a language or group of languages spoken in a certain country.
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